Can street battles affect any outcome?

US President Barack Obama’s signal that he will foil any renewed Republican move (launched this time by presidential hopeful Ted Cruz) to rename the plaza near the Chinese embassy after the dissident Liu Xiaobo — even if he is a fellow Nobel Peace Prize winner — is curious. Surely, he must be aware of the Washington DC precedent: the then-Soviet Embassy was similarly honoured by having the street in front renamed in 1984 after Andrei Sakharov, another en-Nobeled dissident. Maybe President Obama just wants to prevent the Chinese retaliating with a Kim Jong-il St tag for the US Embassy in Beijing, considering the US consulate in Kolkata has had to grin and bear the name Ho Chi Minh Sarani bestowed by the Left Front government in West Bengal, since 1969.

Iran may rename the street in Tehran on which the Embassy of Saudi Arabia stands after the Shia cleric the Saudis executed, Sheikh Nimr al-Nimr. After all, in 1981, the British Embassy in Tehran had its address changed from Churchill St to Bobby Sands St, after the Irish Republican Army member. Needling with street names is clearly a game no country tires of. But will reports of an imminent installation of a memorial to “the genocide of American-Indians” near the US Embassy in Moscow make President Obama pull his punches with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin?